Frequently unasked questions

Tony Davis asks what do we know about the Rolls-Royce Wraith?

Frequently unasked questions

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has released yet more ''official images'' of its forthcoming Wraith coupe.

So now we know exactly what the damn thing looks like, right?

Not quite. The car isn't scheduled to be fully unveiled until the Geneva motor show in March.

What we have this week is a picture of the inner side of a door. Yep, a door.

The whole car may break cover before March. It may break cover before I even finish typing this sentence, so speedy is the pace of automotive spin and leakage these days.

But until it does, what can we learn?

As car doors go, it's long and liberally lined with leather. It appears to open at the front as per the portals of the bigger Phantom coupe.

Either that, or the handle and armrest are back-to-front, but don't worry, we'll iron out those sorts of bugs before the first customer cars are delivered.

The photographed Wraith door also has vast expanses of ''open-pore wood.''

Not quite sure what open-pore wood is, but fortunately we have the printed assurance that ''this contemporary finish presents an interior space that hints at the interior of an ultra-luxury yacht.

''The horseshoe sweep of Wraith's cabin also echoes the cove at Le Canadel, in the south of France, where Sir Henry Royce and his design team spent their winters.''

Yep, it's hard to look at this door trim and to not think of the cove at Le Canadel.

Or at least to not think of the sad person at head office who was told to come up with a convincing justification for a photo of a door.

''Sorry to give you the short straw, chum. Just make sure you don't give away anything meaningful about the vehicle itself. If you run out of things to write about, rabbit on about some Gallic coastal inlet.''

But weight, there's more. Sorry, I'll try that again. Considering the Ghost sedan (on which the Wraith is based) weighs more than 2.4 tonnes, it's probably not inaccurate.

Wait, we also have a photo of a clock. It is ''presented with blood-orange needle tips that point to the car's dynamic potential, while paying homage to the marque's aviation heritage.''

Why release a car bit by bit? Simple.

The amount of news around is so great, and the churn rate on websites so high, that a car maker can release an all-new model after four years of expensive research and development, get 10 minutes at the top of the homepage and then be buried under the sheer weight of new releases from around the globe.

This burying avalanche of new releases just as likely contains pictures of the inside of other people's doors, factory-issued teaser sketches of forthcoming cars and, increasingly, ''official spy photos'' handed out with no sense of shame or irony.

''Hey, this is what you'd have seen if you had hidden behind the bushes at our proving ground.

''But we appreciate you're busy, so we've had our guys lie on the cold ground on your behalf.''

In January 2013, McLaren offered photos of its P1 supercar at speed, clad in the now de rigueur swirly wallpaper camouflage.

Cadillac released photos of a disguised version of its ELR hybrid just before the 2013 Detroit motor show.

It put the undisguised car on the stand at the show, then a week or two later sent out slightly blurry ''spy'' shots of the car undergoing snow testing.

I'm sure if asked nicely, it would file the story for a busy journalist too.